With the advances in the availability of video and audio software online there is now a huge wealth of free Spanish lessons available over the internet. These Spanish lessons can take you through from the very beginning and cover a range of different topics. There are however only a few series of free Spanish lessons I would highly recommend and in this article I will point you in the right direction to find these.
Practicing speaking with free Spanish lessons?
There are basic Spanish vocab and grammar lessons, beginner conversation lessons and further, more advanced, free Spanish lessons to help across all parts of your Spanish. I will say before we start that sometimes however, especially for speaking, it is advantageous to go to a Spanish class where you can interact with others. To overcome this problem, most practically at a more advanced level, Spanish software like Live Mocha allows you to construct a Spanish conversation exchange over the internet. At a beginner level you really do need to make sure though that you are constantly practicing your speaking – this isn’t particularly easy but just talking to yourself, friends and family helps you to improve. One good way to learn Spanish using free online courses and lessons is therefore to do so with a practice partner – if you want to be speaking with a real teacher there are also Skype teaching programmes available at competitive prices.
Is it worth buying a Spanish language Course?
My second recommendation is to purchase a Spanish course if you possibly can – it may be possible to learn Spanish for free online but it really is a lot easier to follow a structured course all the way through. The online marketplace for these courses is extremely competitive so you can get a great bargain and excellent course if you shop around. In my opinion, for the purposes of a beginner, the Rocket Spanish and Rosetta Stone courses are excellent.
1 – Spanish Dict
The first free course of Spanish lessons I recommend is the Spanish learning videos available from Spanish Dict. These lessons focus on expanding vocabulary as a beginner and then building up your grammar and vocab skills as the course progresses. If you complete all four categories of 15 ten minute lessons you will have mastered communicating in a range of tenses with an intermediate vocabulary – the teacher is excellent and the free lessons are very clear. I would recommend repeating lessons to make sure you really master the material and make sure you practice as much as possible.
2 – Real Spanish, 123TeachMe and StudySpanish
If you want more specific vocabulary themes and more in depth written lessons around the grammar there is also good material at Real Spanish, 123 Teach Me and Study Spanish. These lessons do not have an audio teacher which is a great advantage of the Spanish Dict course. However there are good quizzes and games accompanying the wide range of lessons so these lessons are really good practice (and free as well) – it always helps to be doing different kinds of lessons and learning in different ways so these Spanish lessons are highly recommended.
3 – Check out YouTube
You will have to search them out but there are some great courses available on YouTube with free Spanish vocab and grammar lessons. The problem with these is the field is very saturated and you need to make sure you find a good teacher with clear lesson plans and content. There are also a lot of English speakers out there teaching Spanish and I’m afraid to say a lot of these don’t have an authentic enough accent to be teaching others (at least to an advanced level). Also many of these courses are taught in different ways – for instance the Master Spanish course on YouTube simply repeats Spanish phrases rather than actually teaching any Spanish as such. This sort of video can help and watching them won’t do any harm but really the websites mentioned above offer a far more professional and useful content in their Spanish lessons.
4 – Notes in Spanish Podcasts
In terms of listening just watching the lessons available on YouTube mentioned above is going to help. However I would also recommend the Notes in Spanish Podcasts – these are not so much lessons but allow you to listen to realistic Spanish conversation designed specifically for different levels of Spanish ability. These were one of my personal favourite ways to develop my listening skills moving from beginner to intermediate and then advanced level Spanish.